Maggie Q

Naked Weapon

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Naked Weapon
  • IMDb: link

Nearly a decade before she was Nikita, Maggie Q was basically Nikita. Siu-Tung Ching‘s 2002 thriller stars Maggie Q, Anya Wu, and Jewel Lee as the three survivors from dozens of young girls abducted over the world, trained to be assassins, and pitted against each other by the elusive Madam M (Almen Wong). The movie offers flashbacks to the the girls’ training and graduation while in the present our protagonists are offered one last job to earn their freedom only to fall into a trap laid by a Yakuza boss (Andrew Lien) out for revenge against the women for one of their previous missions.

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Ballard – BYOB

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Ballard – BYOB
  • IMDb: link

Investigation into other cases is largely put on hold as Ballard (Maggie Q) and her team are ordered to reopen a different cold case involving the death of a young man at a fraternity given the victim’s sister and her most recent stunt getting play on social media. In that aspect, “BYOB” is mostly a case-of-the-week episode where the truth behind the crime isn’t what anyone initially expects. There are scenes here and there tied to the larger mystery including Martina (Victoria Moroles) being stalked by one of the lower-ranking members of the conspiracy and Ballard and confirming evidence from years ago was destroyed until suspicious circumstances including forgery of a retiring cop to hide who within the department wanted the bullet destroyed. And we get several scenes involving Parker (Courtney Taylor) agonizing over if she really wants to return to duty (despite all outward signs showing she’s pretty much all-in at this point).

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Ballard – Haystacks

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Ballard – Haystacks
  • IMDb: link

While continuing to piss-off others within the department, Ballard (Maggie Q) makes headway on the case of the dead cleaning woman (stepping on the toes of the detective not paying attention to the case) which she closes by tracking down the homeless man who shot her earning a small victory and uncovering evidence of a police cover-up. In terms of the other linked cases, the leading suspect in the death of the councilman’s (Noah Bean) sister is ruled out for his airtight alibi for the second murder. However, Ballard poking around that case does lead her to receive a visit from Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) who offers a few words of advice and teases more potential help further down the line. It’s an incrimental step to solving the larger mysteries at play, but a solid step nonetheless.

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Ballard – Library of Lost Souls

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Ballard – Library of Lost Souls
  • IMDb: link

Spinning off from the Bosch series, the opening episode of Ballard introduces us to Maggie Q as LAPD Detective Renée Ballard who fits the classic mode of a smart and tough cop whose obsessive search for the truth rubs some the wrong way. Something, alluded to multiple times in the episode but not yet revealed in full, got Ballard shunned to the ass-end of the LAPD. Newly demoted to head of LAPD’s Cold Case unit, Ballard works mostly with retirees and volunteers attempting to solve older crimes everyone else has given up on.

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The Protégé

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Protégé
  • IMDb: link

The Protégé movie reviewFor having a single writer and no directorial or production upheaval, The Protégé is one hell of a schizophrenic film. I don’t know if director Martin Campbell and screenwriter Richard Wenk had conflicting takes on what the film should be or if The Protégé is simply an example of the final result being far less than the sum of its parts. The action-thriller stars Maggie Q as a bookshop owner/assassin saved as a child from violence in Vietnam by a professional killer (Samuel L. Jackson) who raised and trained her to be his, wait for it, protégé.

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